Descent
by Kitt Chaos
Summary: A variation of Left Handed Complement. What if D were to give in?


**Descent**

D closed the door to the chamber and turned the gold-colored key in the lock. He placed the key on the night stand near the bed before pulling an ornate chair across the floor and positioned it next to the window. A small table and second matching chair followed. 

D ran his fingers down the silk sleeve of a costly shirt hanging from the bed frame before unfastening his cloak and draping it across the bed. His shirt and the rest of his adventuring clothes followed. D dipped a finger in a vial of oil of sandalwood and ran it across his collarbone before reaching for and shrugging into the silken shirt. Velvet breeches followed. The cravat of the shirt stymied him however. 

"It's simple, D," in his memory a voice sounded next to his ear as he had gazed at his partial reflection in a mirror. The ghost-like reflection had shown no one but D, even though hands had reached around from behind him to tie the cravat for him, "It should be easier for you as you can somewhat see yourself in the glass! Like this..." Thinking back to that memory, watching his partial reflection in the mirror, D found he was able to tie the cravat passably well, though not as well as his father did. 

Father. D glanced at the window and assessed how much time he had left as he reached for a beaded tie. 

"Tie your hair back, D!" his father's voice sounded in his memory again, "You look like a hooligan!" D smiled wryly as he bound his hair away from his face to fall down his back in a single shimmering brown wave. 

It hadn't been easy, planning for this night. D was never certain how much attention Left Hand paid to mundane things, but he had taken no chances. Left Hand had been carefully covered by D's thickest glove any time D had taken an action to prepare for this night. It wasn't the first time D had done that, isolating Left Hand so he could prepare for the night of the Vampire Moon, but this time he had wanted to make certain that it would be a surprise. The gift for this century was special indeed. 

The sky began to glow as the full moon peeked over the horizon. D could feel the scurry in the atmosphere, the unrest of the expectant vampires who waited in this town, waiting for the blessed light of the Vampire Moon. 

D took his seat in the chair on the left, removed his glove and allowed the spectral white light of the Vampire Moon to spill over Left Hand's face. 

Left Hand opened its eyes impossibly wide, smiled an unholy smile, opened its mouth and began to drink. It greedily drank in the moonlight, dimming the chamber as it drank in not only the moonlight spilling directly into D's palm, but all the moonlight shining anywhere near the window. D felt when that moment occurred; when Left Hand had taken in enough of the light and energy of the Vampire Moon, to thin into mist and float free of his hand. 

D's right hand touched and stroked the now unmarked palm of his left, while he watched the mist of his Left Hand coalesce into a man-shaped form sitting with crossed ankles in the chair opposite from him. He stared at his father's profile as Dracula looked out the window at the Vampire Moon that granted him a night of freedom, once every one hundred years. 

Dracula turned back to look at D and reached a languid hand down to the table. The surface was empty. 

"No wine?" Dracula asked mildly, "Not even the poor substitute this century?" he mourned. Dracula looked closer at D, wondering what D's 'gift' was this century. Dracula and D had been at odds, in something akin to a gentleman's feud, for over a millennia. The night of the Vampire Moon, when Dracula was allowed to be free, had become their night to speak simply and plainly with each other about the ideals that separated them, and the blood-ties that bound them as well. It had become something of a night of truce between them. 

"Hmmm," Dracula rose fluidly to his feet and took two steps closer to D. 

"Your appearance pleases me," he admitted, "But stand. You haven't practiced tying a cravat in a long time, I can tell!" 

D obeyed, allowing his father's skillful touch to undo and retie his cravat for him. 

"I thought you hated, what did you call it once? 'Such foppish clothes'?" Dracula asked as he finished and stepped back. Approval shone in his eyes at how his son appeared. 

D smiled, "I was young then!" 

Dracula laughed, then sighed. 

"Are you sure you have no wine? You are throwing off my routine, D! How am I supposed to try to convince you to see things my way unfortified with wine?" Dracula complained. 

"Hmmm," D smiled a secret smile. 

"Here," D crossed over to the night stand and retrieved the key, offering it to his father, "It unlocks the door there." 

Dracula shot a puzzled look into D's eyes before walking across the room, fitting the key into the lock and opening the door. His eyes widened as he beheld the room beyond the chamber door. He closed the door, turned the key and walked back to D's side. 

"My...gift?" Dracula asked, nonplused. 

"No." 

"What then?" 

"The future," D responded, "Your gift..." D gathered the stray strands of his hair in his hand, pulled them aside, and bared his neck, "...is here." 

"D!" his father responded in shock, "Are...are you...sure?!" 

"I am weary of the fight. For centuries we have argued with each other. For long, tedious years I have fought against vampires, hunting them and slaying them to protect humans. I've barely made a dent. Humans are still here. They don't need me. Why should I deny myself the pleasure of what I long to do, what I long to be, any longer?" 

"D...I thought this day would never come!" Dracula had tears in his eyes as he embraced his son. 

Dracula was tenderly gentle, his fingers stroking hypnotically across D's cheek and down his neck. He gazed with joyful hope deep into D's eyes to make certain that this was indeed what his son wanted. There was a time he would not have concerned himself about that, but the centuries had softened him and increased his sensitivity to his son's will. D's eyes were steady, knowing exactly what he was offering to his father and promising his willingness anyway. 

"You will be a little weak at first," Dracula told him. 

D nodded, "I expected that." 

"My son! I will take care of you," Dracula promised. 

With long-practiced but long-disused skill, Dracula found and stroked along D's carotid artery, sensing the pulse and tide of D's life force that he would so radically change. 

"You're wearing sandalwood," Dracula noted. 

"I know the scent pleases you, father," D replied. Dracula smiled. 

"The pain will be momentary," he promised. 

"Father," D smiled, "I understand. This is indeed what I wish. You do not need to delay." 

Still Dracula held back, reaching instead for D's left hand. 

"He will be no more," Dracula noted, referring to the entity known as Left Hand. 

"Is that, indeed, such a tragedy?" D laughed ruefully. 

"Perhaps. Though I tried to be irritating, I always tried to help too," Dracula told him. 

"I know, Father." 

"You are certain of this?" 

"Yes," D vowed. 

Dracula took D's face between his hands, forcing D's eyes to meet his. Unlike so many, many years before, Dracula's compelling gaze found no resistance. D's eyes half closed indicating the malleable, submissive state that would allow... 

Dracula stroked along D's artery again. D turned his head away granting the completely unresisting access Dracula sought. 

It had been many, many years coming. The separateness, the apartness, the loneliness of his existence, the ultimately futile nature of his quest, and the surprising resilience of the human race which had rendered D's sacrifices ludicrous, had finally worn away D's resistance to this ultimate fulfillment of his own dark nature. He had resisted this knowledge the past few waxings of the Vampire Moon. He had clung to his tattered ideals stubbornly, not wanting to admit the pain of the way he had led his life was something he had brought upon himself. This time, for whatever reason, the thought of seeing his father again, denying the arguments he had come to believe himself and especially the thought of yet again reducing the father he loved intensely to another hundred years of parasitic dependence upon him, finally broke him. 

And so, after weeks of careful thought and preparation, he stood here, his will gently suspended by his father's vampiric power, baring his neck, waiting for the bite that would both kill and transform him, finally, into what half of him already was. 

"I have no regrets," D realized, while he waited in that suspended state, "This is truly what I wish." 

"Then welcome, my son! Become!" D heard deep in his mind, in his father's voice. 

"My son!" Dracula whispered before gently, carefully, tenderly biting down, taking D's lifeblood in. Dracula could feel the tide of power rising within himself, making him again the Lord of All Vampires, the sweet, sweet power of his son's very life. But his bite was not merely a selfish one. Even as he took that life and power, altering it within himself to become the life force of a vampire, he returned some of that altered power to his son. 

Blinding ecstasy swept the slight pain of the bite itself away, filling D's mind with images and sensations the likes of which, despite his many long years, he'd never conceived existed. The ebbing of the rapture, along with his life, was gentle, natural, sparking no panic or worry, no fear or regret. On the edge of unfathomable blackness D waited, wondering briefly how long the fall into the blackness would last, before his consciousness simply gave up and snuffed out. 

"That fall is not for you, my son," Dracula's voice wandered across the margin of the blackness, "I'd never consign you to that!" 

A red tide of rapture erupted from the blackness, caught D's consciousness up and bore it along, surging upward again and again toward a light as unfathomably white as the blackness had been dark. In one final surge of power it pushed D into the light and through it to the other side. D's consciousness swirled away at that, finally, and he knew no more. 

Air rushed convulsively, painfully, into his lungs. He was assaulted by sensations too intense, light too bright, colors too garish, sounds too loud, textures too rough and he cried out in his confusion and pain. 

"I'm here, D!" his father's touch was the lightest brush in the palm of his left hand. 

"It's okay," Dracula's voice was the softest whisper cutting easily through the harsh, pain-inducing sounds of D's own breathing, "Your senses, so newly awakened to their full ability, will settle soon." 

D closed his eyes and concentrated on the soft susurration of air into Dracula's lungs and the feather-light touch of his father's fingers stroking the palm of his hand. After some time D found he could listen to other sounds without pain and dared to open his eyes again. 

Everything was still too sharp, too bright and too colorful, compared to how he had seen it before, but even as he blinked something in him clicked and he could bear it. 

"So strong you are! How swiftly you are recovering, D!" Dracula praised. 

"What...?" 

"Vampire senses are more subtle than human ones. There is always a period of adjustment for one newly sired." 

"How...long...was I...was I...?" Though he knew what had happened, D still couldn't admit that he'd been dead. 

"Only a few minutes," Dracula seemed pleased, "Partly because you were halfway there already, but I'd like to think the ease of it is because you are my son. A full human usually rests three days before the change is complete. That's why so many of them must claw their ways out of graves I suppose... Of course, I never allowed one I sired to be buried. It's much more gentle to allow them to wake up in a bed!" 

D realized that's exactly what his father had done for him, as he was lying in the bed with his father kneeling on the floor at his side. A new sensation assaulted him. 

"Hungry..." 

Dracula smiled, discreetly revealing his fangs. 

"You need nourishment. Now, I must ask you...how did you select the contents of the other chamber?" 

"All humans who claimed they wanted to know the 'rapture of the vampire's kiss'," D almost snorted in derision. 

"And you doubt that rapture now, after experiencing it for yourself?!" Dracula demanded. 

D thought back to what he had seen, and what he had felt, when his father bit him. If he had known...he wouldn't have resisted his father's bite so long ago. He regretted that such rapture was only a memory, as one could be made a vampire only once. 

"No...it seems there is truth in the myth," D admitted. 

"Good! I can teach you the way of bringing that to your human partner. And you don't have to make the human a vampire to bring it, if you are careful." 

D was relieved to hear that. 

"And, as you are the one bringing the ecstasy, you can share in it too. Your mother and I..." Dracula tapered off modestly. 

He could understand now why his kin, the vampires he had misguidedly hunted for so long, preyed upon humans if this was the reason! 

"No, the trick is to sometimes give the rapture without sharing in it," Dracula told D, somehow sensing his thoughts, "Otherwise you get used to it, jaded to it and finally crave it like a drug. Those are the vampires who prey so hideously on humankind." 

D nodded. 

"And there are some who never learned how to give the rapture, only selfishly taking it all for themselves and letting the human slip into the darkness." 

D nodded again. 

"There is an art to the bite, my boy, but I am certain you will learn it!" Dracula rose to his feet and reached down to help D up from the bed. He produced the golden key to the second chamber and smiled, baring his fangs. 

"Shall we go and give those warm, willing, young things the rapture only we can bring?" 

D nodded again, following his father into the chamber where his first meal as a full vampire waited eagerly for him. 

"NOOOOO!" 

D struggled with the bedclothes, finally in desperate panic wresting himself from the bed and shivering in the center of the small chamber of the inn he had taken for the night. He calmed his racing heart, horrified at the vivid dream that had waken him. 

"No..." he moaned quietly, "Never! That can't be the way of it... I'll never give in..." 

He paced about the chamber for several long minutes, regaining his equilibrium from the far too realistic dream. Finally he climbed back into the soft bed, curled on his side in an almost fetal position and closed his eyes. Surprisingly, sleep came quickly to claim him. He clutched the pillow tightly in his sleep, bringing his hands under it to cushion his head more firmly. 

"Heh, heh!" Left Hand's tiny, whispering voice came from beneath the pillow, "It's the night of the Vampire Moon...you lock the door to a second chamber with a gold key...you prepare the chamber arranging ornate chairs near the window..."   


~end~

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Reviews, comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome! Please feel free to email me also if you see something awkward that needs to be clarified or fixed. I need all the help I can get! 

stargarde@stargarde.com   



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